Create a Standard Itembank Assessment

In the Itembank, assessments can be created with items/questions from the community-driven public item bank, 3rd party item banks purchased by the district, user-created items, or a combination of all three. This lesson will show you how to create an assessment with items and publish a test booklet ready to use with students.

Where to Start

Create A New Assessment

1. Give a Name for your assessment. The red asterisk (*) next to Name the Assessment indicates this field is required.

2. The description will not tie to filters (i.e., narrowing down your displayed list of assessments) but can contain any information you find helpful (such as the purpose of the assessment, what you plan to do with results, a particular student group that should take the assessment, etc.).

1. Choose the standards set, subject, and the grade level for the standard(s) to which you will be aligning to your assessment. As you select the drop-down menus the standards will be automatically loaded on the page. To find a specific standard by key word or standard code, use the search box then click Search.

2. You can click any arrow symbol to expand the strand or sub-strand and see the standards housed within.

3. Select the standard(s) by clicking on the bolded name of the standard. A chain link symbol will appear when standard is linked. To unlink, click again to unselect.

You can continue adding and selecting as many standards as you need, to in the next step, review items for your test! You can also come back to this page after searching for specific items and add more as you need!

4. As you select standards, the number of standards selected and the standard codes will appear to the right of the page. The number of items will be 0 because you have selecting items from the bank, yet.

5. You may continue to select standards by changing your search options at the top of the page. Click Next.

If you build Assessments in the Itembank often, you will see recent standards you've used under the standard dropdown menus, for quick addition to a search.

Use the search filters to find the items you wish to add to your test. You may select multiple filters to narrow your search. Remember to click Update Filters after each of your selections in order to apply the filters to your results.

By default, selecting Search will find items tied to your selected standards and selected Itembanks. Each of the additional filters are ways to refine, find, and target specific questions and attributes you are looking for

Click the change any of the following to enhance your search:

Item Banks: Click one or more banks to search for items. The Public bank contains items submitted by Itembank users. If your district has purchased items from specific 3rd party vendors (e.g., INSPECT), those banks will appear. Available bands may vary.

Item Types: Choose from available item types (e.g., multiple choice).

Passages: Search for items that are use passages, do not have passages or either.

Attributes: Choose from a variety of attributes such as Depth of Knowledge or DOK levels, Blooms Taxonmony and more. This also included English, Spanish and other item information.

Locked Status: Search for items that are locked or unlocked, meaning they cannot or can be duplicated to be revised to make your own versoin.

Authors: As you get more familiar with what items and passages you have access to, you can search for particular authors.

Item Keywords: Enter key words to find items with those words contained in the stem or answer options.

Passage/Title: Enter a specific passage title to find items for.

Item/Passage Identifiers: With our partnering vendors, this provides the ablity to search by a specific item number, which is found as part of the attributes for each item.

1. Click on the name of the standard and the 'Select Standards' box will pop up.

2. Click on the standard you no longer want to search by to un-highlight it. OR use Unselect All, or Select All.

3. Select Update Filters.

Add Items

Once at least 1 item is added, you are able to Preview the assessment thus far. This allows you to see a Student View of the assessment as you are building, before publishing.

Search results will appear below the Search Filters area so that you can add items to your assessment.

1. At the top of your search results, you will see the number of items found from your search and you may jump from page to page by clicking the arrows next to the page number at right.

2. Each item displays the standard code aligned to the item, teacher instructions (if available), the stem, answer choices (correct answer in green), and a link to show Rationale & Item info (if the item contains this information).

3. Click the Add button to add the item to your assessment. Once added, the button will be shaded in gray with the word "Added." In the example above, the second question has been added. To remove an item, simply click the Added button and the item will be removed from your assessment.

4. As items are added to your assessment, a count of the items added will appear to the right of the page as well as the number of items by standard.

5. Click Next when finished adding items.

Note: The Pencil/Screen icons at the top of the item indicate if an item works on paper test, online test or both.

The Booklet step provides several options to format your assessment. These settings are enabled for a paper copy of the assessment, either the Teacher or Student edition.

Print Options

By default, Print Options should meet your needs. If you'd like to change them, you can Save as Default to keep the new settings as your new defaulted print options for all future itembank assessments.

Select the Print Options such as Font Size, Question and Choice Spacing, Font type or Face, to customize the Student Booklet.

To download a copy of the Student Booklet, select Generate.

To download a copy of the Teacher's Edition, make sure to select Teacher Edition to Yes. Then Generate for a copy..

Notice that if using items that are media or technology enhanced, they will NOT print on the paper booklet but appear blank. The Teacher's Edition will provide ifnormation as needed to review student results, but the actual item will not appear in the booklet.

Once you are back in Illuminate, you will see your published itembank assessment in your list of assessments. In the example above, the Algebra I Blueprint is an itembank assessment as noted in the Type column.

You may share the itembank assessment you published with other users in your district. See the "Share an Assessment" lesson for more details. Please be aware that itembank assessments can only be duplicated and deleted by the assessment author. In addition, since the assessment is "published," editing of the test booklet is not possible.

Check out Illuminate U! for training modules on Assessments and Itembank!